Oleg Antonov - Aviation Career

Aviation Career

At the age of 17, Antonov founded the "Amateur Aviation Club" and the "Organization of Friends of the Air Force." In the same year, he designed the OKA-1 "Pigeon", a glider that was entered in a competition in Moscow where he won the first prize, a flight on a Junkers 12 aircraft.

In 1930, Antonov graduated from the Kalinin Polytechnical Institute in Leningrad. He continued to design gliders and in 1931, Antonov became the chief designer of the Moscow Glider Factory. During the next eight years, he designed 30 different gliders including the Standard-1, Standard-2, OKA-6 and the large "City of Lenin" glider. Due to a requirement that all pilots in the Soviet Union had to begin their flight training on gliders, Antonov was able to produce up to 8,000 gliders per year.

In 1938, due to an incident when an instructor defected to the West using a glider, the Soviet government reversed its decision regarding glider training, banned the sport of gliding and shut down the Moscow Glider Factory. Following the close of the glider factory, Antonov was hired as the Chief Designer for Yakovlev Aircraft. In 1940, a new company in his own name was created in Leningrad.